


Only Here to Do the Job

by AstroGirl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mother's Day, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), Unresolved Romantic Tension, pseudo-parental relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24209125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: It's Mother's Day.  (Or one of them, anyway.)  Warlock marks the occasion.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 124
Collections: Gen Prompt Bingo Round 18





	Only Here to Do the Job

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "Kids/Babies." Although there is only one kid.

Warlock is being an unholy terror again. And maybe that's a good thing-- a bad thing-- something Crowley ought to be encouraging. But an Antichrist who's prone to throwing tantrums (and random objects) at every thwarted whim is probably not at all what she actually wants, come the End Times. 

If they're lucky, maybe this sort of thing is just the kid being human, after all. A five-year-old human who sometimes really, _really_ wants some ice cream. Maybe he'll grow out of it. But just in case, Crowley figures it's probably time for a little angelic intervention.

Plus, it'll be good to get him out of the house. His whining complaints are starting to annoy everyone, which Crowley might in principle approve of, if some of the abused ears in question didn't belong to his long-suffering nanny.

"Come on, dear," she says, in a kind and gentle tone – because she's a good actor, shut up – and offers the boy her hand, to lift him up from where he's curled up in a small, defiant bundle of anger on the floor. "Why don't we go and take a nice walk in the garden?"

Warlock allows himself to be pulled up, although he lets out a few more loud, angry sniffles that Crowley imagines are probably mostly for show, and makes a point of casting one last, surly look at his mother, the Denier of Ice Cream. (Crowley herself would be happy to let him have all he ice cream he likes. Because, really, who knows? Maybe when the final day comes, he'll look back on all the ice cream he's eaten in the last eleven years and think, "Hey, what do I want to go destroying the world for, when it's given me all that lovely ice cream?" It could happen. Hmm. Crowley makes a mental note to sneak him some later on. Even if it doesn't have the desired effect, it'll still be a worthwhile lesson in rule-breaking.)

"Yes, good idea," says Harriet, and Warlock's little body stiffens up as if he's thinking about refusing to go, now, just on general rebellious principle. Which is something Crowley understands, for all her protests about how her fall from Heaven was practically an embarrassing accident. He quickly thinks better of it, though, which Crowley also understands. Warlock enjoys taking walks around the garden for precisely the same reason Crowley does.

They find the reason staring at a rose bush with a look of good-natured confusion on his face, as if he's entirely uncertain what he's meant to be doing with it. (Fertilizer. The answer is fertilizer. Crowley can see she's going to have a lot more covering for him to do on the gardening front.) He looks up as they approach, and breaks out into a wide smile that somehow still manages to be angelic, even with the ridiculous teeth.

"Young Master Warlock! Cr-- Nanny Ashtoreth! How are you this fine morning!"

"Hello, Brother Francis!" Warlock is all smiles now, his pain and outrage at the unfairness of the universe suddenly entirely forgotten. Crowley could almost be jealous of Aziraphale's effect on the boy, if only she didn't understand it entirely too well. (Then again, maybe she's entitled to, anyway. Hypocrisy is a suitably demonic trait, surely?)

"Hi," Crowley says, and is rewarded with a buck-toothed angelic smile of her very own. (And, Satan help her, she might actually be getting used to the teeth.)

"So, tell me, Master Warlock," Aziraphale says, turning his attention back to the child. (Which is okay. It's fine. The child is what they're here for.) "Are you being good to your dear old mother today? Do you have something planned for her on this special day?" His accent is wavering a bit, not that it matters. Miraculously, no one but Crowley ever actually notices.

Warlock looks at him blankly. "Special? Why is it special?"

"Well, my boy..."

Crowley, who'd been about to ask the same question, realizes the answer before Aziraphale can finish his reply. "It's Mother's Day," she says, before he can come out with whatever rambling, colorful explanation he was about to construct. She isn't sure why she didn't realize it sooner. How has she managed to lose track of the time, when there may be so little of it left? Although, now that she thinks about it, she's a little surprised Aziraphale has paid enough attention to the calendar to notice. He has enough trouble, most of the time, just remembering what decade he's in. They're probably lucky he isn't asking why they aren't being given the day off to go to church, as if it was still the 17th century.

"Yes, Mothering Sunday," Aziraphale says, possibly proving Crowley's point. Warlock looks back and forth between them, more confused than ever.

"They're Americans, angel." Oh, bugger. She called him "angel." Again. That, people _have_ noticed. Crowley's fairly certain they all think she's having an affair with the gardener, which... With a mildly painful mental lurch, Crowley drags her attention back on topic. "They do it on a different day."

"Oh, do they?" Aziraphale looks as if he's filing away an interesting new fact, although Crowley gives it about even odds that he'll forget where he filed it and be surprised all over again come May, or whenever it is the Americans have settled on for their own displays of gooey sentimentality. "Oh, but one of the great joys of living in new lands, young Warlock, is learning their customs and sharing their celebrations."

If Warlock wasn't here, Crowley would make a remark about a particularly memorable Saturnalia celebration at this point. As it is, she simply raises a meaningful eyebrow. She's pretty sure Aziraphale notices and interprets it correctly, but he chooses to ignore it.

"Why don't we find a nice gift to give your lovely ol' mum, hmm?" Aziraphale is enthusiastically disappearing into the gardener character again, but the look in his eyes is still pure angel.

Warlock sticks out his lower lip. Humans should not be that cute when they pout, and the Antichrist _definitely_ should not be. "I dunno, Brother Francis. I'm angry at mu--" He stops himself. Crowley knows why. He's heard the boy's father yelling "Talk like an American, dammit!" at him. Crowley... might have to do something about that. "At my mom," Warlock finishes. "She wouldn't let me have any ice cream! She never listens to what I want at all!"

"Oh, but young Warlock." Aziraphale puts a hand on Warlock's shoulder. "Your mother loves you. If she makes rules for you, it's only because she believes they're what's best."

Crowley manages to contain her snort at that. Well, mostly. Warlock looks appropriately skeptical.

Aziraphale ignores that, too, and continues in patient, beneficent tones. "It's a good thing, you know, to honor your parents, and to show them kindness and love. All creatures deserve kindness and love, o' course, but the people who care for you, who look out for you and help you through your life, well, they are very special. Aren't they?"

Warlock nods, his face serious and thoughtful now, but for some reason Aziraphale is looking at Crowley instead. There's something in his face, something meaningful that she can't quite make sense of...

Oh. Right. The people who care for you and look out for you. He's probably trying to reinforce in the kid's mind the idea that his human parents are _really_ his parents, because they're the ones who were here for him. Maybe make him less likely to embrace Satan as dear old dad, when the time comes. Good thinking. Crowley seriously doubts it'll _work_ , because Warlock's parents have a pronounced tendency to leave most of the hard work to the nanny, and because nothing is _ever_ that simple. But still. Clever angel.

She smiles at Aziraphale, and Aziraphale smiles back, and they stay like that for a moment, until Warlock finally says, "What should I do, then? For my mom?"

Aziraphale takes his gaze away from Crowley and focuses it on the boy, and she tries not to feel jealous again. "Why don't we pick some flowers for her? Hmm? We can make her a lovely bouquet."

Warlock nods and agrees, and the two of them wander off through the garden. Crowley sprawls herself across a bench and leaves them to it. Aziraphale has to have some alone time with the kid to exert his influence. That's part of their current arrangement. Anyway, she's had a hard day of nannying and attempted apocalypse prevention, even if it is barely past noon. She could curl up here, in the watery spring sunlight, and take a nap. How many sunny days – well, vaguely sun-adjacent days, it is England, after all – will there be left to nap in?

Fewer than there might have been, maybe, if she spends them sleeping. She straightens up – more or less – with a sigh, as the angel and the Antichrist come towards her, bearing flowers. Aziraphale hands them to her for inspection. 

"What do you think?"

You can tell which ones he miracled up, and which ones he grew himself. The former are beautiful, and entirely out of season. The latter... Crowley turns away from the kid to flash them a threatening bit of fang, and they perk up a little, at least. "Yeah," she says, "they'll do."

"Oh, lovely," says Aziraphale, and there's nothing of the gardener at all in his voice, only happy, helpful angel. Well, that's all right. He's better at that than gardening.

"Come on, dear," Crowley says to Warlock. "Let's go and give these to your mother."

She stops on the way, though, to pick up Brother Slug and nestle him in among the petals, giving Warlock a little wink from behind her sunglasses as she does so. Demonic influence. Can't forget to keep doing her job. 

Which, come to think of it...

"Actually, dear" she says. "Why don't I take you out to buy a card for her, as well?"

Mass-produced greeting cards are, after all, one of the things she's proudest of having invented.

**

Harriet coos over the flowers, shrieks at the slug, and puts on that blandly polite smile people are always obligated to put on when presented with a particularly insipid and generic mass-produced greeting card, and Crowley figures that's probably the end of that for another year, or at least for a couple more months, depending on exactly how American they're all feeling. 

And then it's one more day over, or nearly so, with the kid as thoroughly, boringly human-seeming at the end of it as he was at the beginning. One more day that ends with Crowley thinking maybe they actually have a chance of succeeding. Maybe.

In a moment, it'll be time to get the Antichrist into bed and sing him his regularly scheduled lullaby about death and destruction. She went to a lot of trouble coming up with that song. She wonders if Hell has even noticed. It's exactly the sort of thing they've told her they want her to do, but if it's a little too over-the-top for a five-year-old to take seriously, she doubts anyone Below knows humans anywhere near well enough to realize it.

It's one Heaven of a balancing act. Seven months, and she's getting tired of it already. And the demoning, really, is the easy part. She didn't think, when she first proposed this idea, that it would involve nearly so much wiping of noses, and soothing of nightmares, and trying to get the boy to make up his blessed mind about which cereal he wants to eat for breakfast. Seriously, some days it's all she can do to get some nourishment into him before it's time to stop arguing about whether he's going to eat his breakfast and start arguing about whether he's going to eat his lunch.

Crowley sighs, leans back in the Dowlings' expensive armchair and puts her feet up on their expensive coffee table. Once the kid is in bed, maybe she'll sneak over to the gardener's cabin, talk the angel into a nightcap. Maybe he'll let her bend his ear with her complaints, and she'll let him say things like "buck up!" and "yes, but it's all in a good cause" and "you do so well at it, though," while she pretends to be annoyed. Maybe he'll even take her hand, sympathetically. He does that sometimes, these days. Maybe...

"Nanny?"

Crowley opens her eyes. Warlock is standing in front of her. He looks pleased, and a little nervous. Oh, Satan, what has the little hellspawn done now? "Yes, dear?"

"Nanny!" He smiles. "I made this for you!" He pulls something out from behind his back and offers it to her with a flourish.

She leans forward. Stares at the object. He thrusts it towards her, insistently. "For _you_ , nanny," he says again.

She takes it.

It's... a card. More or less. He's taken a piece of construction paper and folded it in half. There are hearts and flowers crayoned onto the front, and a red-headed stick figure with dark glasses.

"Th... Thank you?" she manages.

"Open it! Open it!"

She does. Inside, it says "HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, NANNY" in shaky green letters. She wonders if he had help with the spelling. His reading is advanced for his age, but he's usually not that good with apostrophes.

And underneath that, in even shakier blue letters, cramped together at the end as if he planned their positioning poorly and ran out of space, "I LUV YU NANY. LUVE, WARLOCK." Hopefully no one helped him with the spelling of _that_. 

She stares at it. She can't seem to stop staring at it.

 _The people who care for you_ , she thinks. Bless it, angel.

"Do you like it, Nanny?" He sounds desperately hopeful. As if she has the ability to break his heart, instead of the other way round.

"Yes," she says, because she has no idea what else to say. "Thank you."

She doesn't love the boy. And not in the way she tells herself she doesn't love Aziraphale, where it's something she has to pretend to believe for his sake, even though she knows better. She genuinely doesn't. He's the _Antichrist_. He's the thing that threatens everything she _does_ love. He exhausts her, he terrifies her. He fills her, some days, with hope. But she doesn't love him. How can you love the oncoming train? You can't. You can only throw yourself as hard as you can at the switch, and hope to Heaven you can shift its track before it flattens you.

She doesn't love him. Even if he's cute when he pouts, even if he sometimes makes the angel smile so hard he glows (which is also, probably, more fearful hope than love). To be honest, much of the time she doesn't even like him. He's a whining, spoiled brat, much more often than he is this... this quiet, lonely, wistful child standing in front of her now.

But for the first time... For the first time, she finds herself hoping that he grows up to have a normal, happy, loving human life, not for Crowley's sake, or Aziraphale's, or the world's, but for his own.

"I'll treasure it always," she says.

"Always?" He is still looking at her with the same disturbingly vulnerable expression in his eyes, waiting on her answer as if it matters.

"Until the end of the world." 

She spreads her arms wide and embraces her tiny, trusting, ambiguously human fate.


End file.
